تقصیر

What it means

تقصیر (taghsir) means fault, blame, or culpability. It is borrowed from Arabic تَقْصِير (taqsir), a verbal noun from the root ق-ص-ر (q-s-r) meaning to fall short, to be deficient, or to neglect a duty. In Arabic, taqsir specifically means falling short of what is required. Persian has kept this core sense and uses تقصیر primarily to assign or claim responsibility for something that went wrong. The most common structures are تقصیر کسی بودن (taghsir-e kasi budan, to be someone’s fault) and تقصیر داشتن (taghsir dâshtan, to bear fault or be to blame). A near synonym in Persian is گناه (gonâh), which covers both sin and fault, but gonâh carries a stronger moral and sometimes religious weight, whereas تقصیر is more neutral and everyday, used comfortably for minor mishaps as well as serious blame.

How to use it

• تقصیر منه (taghsir-e mane) “It’s my fault.”
• تقصیر کیه؟ (taghsir-e kiye?) “Whose fault is it?”
• تقصیر نداری، اشتباه بود (taghsir nadâri, eshtebâh bud) “It’s not your fault, it was a mistake.”
• تقصیر اون ماشینه که تند می‌رفت (taghsir-e un mâshine ke tond miraft) “It’s the fault of that car that was going fast.”

Cultural note

In Iranian conversational culture, assigning تقصیر can be a delicate social negotiation. Directly saying «تقصیر توئه» (it’s your fault) in a heated moment can feel accusatory and damage face (آبرو, âbru). A more socially smooth approach is to soften it, for example by adding «نمی‌خوام تقصیر کسی رو بدم» (I don’t want to blame anyone), which lets the speaker identify what went wrong without directly pointing a finger. At the same time, voluntarily saying «تقصیر منه» is viewed as a mark of honesty and emotional maturity, a form of مسئولیت‌پذیری (mas’uliyat-paziri, taking responsibility) that earns respect.

References

• Dehkhoda
• Vajehyab